by Ann Bannon
“Jack, I’m so terribly sorry,” she said. “I blurted out something about the way you felt about Burr and Marcie. I was trying to calm him down. I should have known better. He was out of his mind.”
“Since when are you and Marcie lovers?”
“We’re not! I would have told you, you know that.” She glanced surreptitiously across the office at Sarah, but Sarah had her eyes on her work. “Burr got it into his head we were because Marcie talked about me so much. Because she stayed home and wouldn’t go out with him. When he accused her, it made her so mad she just told him, ‘Okay, believe it.’ And he did. I thought he was going to kill me last night.”
At this Sarah did look up, but Laura didn’t notice.
“Well, that’s a hell of a story,” Jack said.
“It’s the truth, Jack! I swear.”
“Never mind the truth. You’ve got me in a lovely mess. Burr thinks I promoted the whole affair.”
“My God! Jack, what’ll we do?”
“What can we do? Have you done anything with Marcie you wouldn’t want to write home about?”
“Nothing! I wish to God now I had. As long as he’s going to believe it anyway.”
“Oh, no! Christ! Whatever you do, Laura, don’t touch Marcie. Not till Burr straightens out. Never, if you have any sense.”
Laura wouldn’t answer him. She felt closer to winning Marcie, in spite of their awkwardness with each other this morning, than she ever had. She wouldn’t make any promises to Jack.
“You hear me, Mother?”
“Yes.”
He apparently took that for a promise. “And one more thing.”
“I can’t take any more right now.”
“This won’t hurt. What have you done to Beebo?”
“Done to her? Nothing. Ask her what she’s done to me,” she said, and her voice was hard. Sarah watched her with considerable interest now.
“Keep your voice down, Mother,” Jack said. “Beebo’s goofy for you. And when she gets a girl on her mind, that girl had better watch out. She’s a stubborn bitch.”
“So am I,” Laura snapped.
“She’s in love with you, Laura. Don’t cross her.”
“I’d walk all over her if I could. She treats me like a slave.”
“Christ, keep your voice down,” Jack said, and Laura was surprised at her own lack of caution. Usually she was meticulously careful. Today, nothing seemed to matter. “She’s in love with you,” Jack said. “That explains a lot of things.”
“It doesn’t excuse them. Besides, she isn’t. How do you know she is?”
“She said so.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
Laura couldn’t help being flattered. The pleasure in her was warm and sudden and overwhelmed her bad conscience briefly. “I’m not going to see her again,” she told Jack. This time she almost whispered, which intrigued Sarah still more.
Jack laughed. “Have it your way,” he said. “Only don’t drag me into your messes anymore, Mother. I’ve got enough of my own.”
“Is everything all right between—I mean—” She looked over at Sarah for the first time and surprised Sarah staring at her. Sarah went quickly back to work and Laura felt suddenly nervous. “Jack, I’d better hang up. We’ll talk tonight.”
“Okay. See you at five-thirty.”
Laura spent the rest of the day reassuring herself, I’ll never go back to that hotel. He’ll be gone tomorrow. Or Sunday at the latest. The thought gave her considerable relief.
Chapter Thirteen
Carl Jensen was a clean cut young man, very fair with freckled skin. He engaged Sarah in conversation right away; it was a part of what he considered good technique to get a girl talking, and he wasted no time.
Jack and Laura had dinner with them, but Jack was obviously chafing to get away. They hadn’t even finished their after-dinner coffee before he was whispering in Laura’s ear, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Laura, who was almost wordless through dinner, agreed.
Jack did the dirty work. He told them a joke, he made them laugh, and then he said he had a meeting the next day up in Albany. Very unexpected. Would they mind, etc.
They were a little startled, Jensen especially, for he had expected Jack and Laura to stick with him and lend moral support through the evening—but they replied, almost together, “No, go ahead. We don’t mind.”
As soon as they were in the street Jack sighed, “God. I couldn’t have stood another minute of it. Straight people are so depressing.”
Laura smiled at him and noticed for the first time that evening how tired and worried he looked. She was so wound up in Laura Landon that nobody’s troubles counted for her but her own. But now she saw Jack’s anxiety and she was afraid she had caused it. She started to apologize. “Jack, I want you to know…” she began.
“Skip it.”
“Please.”
“I said skip it.” And his voice was harsh enough to hurt her.
They walked along in silence for a minute and finally Laura said, “Jack, I have to talk. I feel awful about it. I saw my father last night. He saw me, too. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never been so terrified in my life, as if he were the devil and I had to get away from him. I ran all the way to the subway. I think I was hysterical.”
He looked at her and then he sighed. “Everybody’s hysterical. Even me.”
“There was an old colored lady there. In the rest room. She said something I didn’t understand then, but I’ve been thinking about it. She said everybody is a stranger in this world until he finds a little love. That’s the most important thing.”
“Wise lady,” Jack said.
They walked without talking for half a block. “How’s Terry?” Laura asked.
“He needs a spanking. I act like a lovesick cow with him. I can’t help it. I know I’m doing it, and I can’t help it. He laughs at me.” Jack looked at the pavement as he walked, his hands shoved into his pockets. “Mother,” he said slowly. “Do you want to get back in my good graces?”
“I do,” she said gently. “Yes. I do.”
“Well,” he said, and stopped walking. She stopped beside him and saw that he was embarrassed. “This is a rotten thing to do. But I’d do it for you, bear that firmly in mind.” He poked her chest between her breasts, as if he were making a point with a fellow businessman. It was intended to lighten the atmosphere a little, but the atmosphere was too heavy already.
“I’ll help you, Jack, you know I will. Any way I can. You’ve been so wonderful to me. I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Okay, okay.” He stopped her abruptly and then seemed unable to speak himself for a minute. Finally he said, quickly, “I’m losing him, Laura.”
“Oh, Jack!” She was suddenly full of sympathy, but he cut her off again.
“What the hell,” he said cynically. “I expected it. I predicted it. And I know why.”
“Why?”
“Mother, you have a short memory.” He smiled wryly. “My little friend likes nice things. Nice things cost money. And besides,” he looked at his shoes, scraping one toe along a crack in the pavement, “I can’t handle him. I should shove his teeth down his throat. I should make him behave. And I can’t. I feel more like falling on my knees and worshipping him. He has no respect for me.” He spoke so softly that Laura had to strain to hear him.
She put her hands on his arms. “Jack, he’s not worth your time,” she said. “Anybody who would take advantage—”
“No, no, no, it’s normal. In this abnormal world we live in, you and I. If I were young and beautiful, he’d settle for that. But I’m not. I’m middle-aged and ugly. And a sap. So it takes something else…money. I wish had the knack of being a millionaire.”
“Damn it, Jack, you need somebody who can appreciate you.” He laughed bitterly, but she went on. “You make me hate Terry already without ever having seen him.”
“No, Laura,” he said seriously. “Don’t h
ate him. He’s very young. He’ll learn. It’s my fault. I can’t give him what he needs.”
“Dollar bills?”
Jack sighed. “That’s my last chance. I know it takes something else, but I haven’t got it. And now I haven’t got the dollar bills, either.”
“If I were a boy I’d fall madly in love with you,” Laura said.
This was such a startling remark that Jack had to drop his cynicism and take it in the spirit in which it was given. “Thanks, Mother,” he said softly. He looked at her, his ugly intelligent face prey to a number of strong emotions that he made no attempt to hide. It was a measure of his regard for Laura that he could let her see him stripped of wit and laughter like this. “How much do you have in the bank, Laura?”
Laura stared a little at him. But then she said quickly, “All I have is yours, Jack. It’s not much, but if it’ll help…
He smiled a little and then he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re a doll,” he said. “We both know this is a losing investment. But it’ll give me a few more days with him. After that…” He shrugged. “Well, I always seem to live through these things. I don’t know why.”
They stood uncertainly on the corner for a minute and suddenly he asked, “Where are you going now?”
“Home.”
“To Marcie?”
“Yes. I hope Burr hasn’t tried to bother her.”
“He’s pretty sick about the whole thing. I think he’ll drink it off for a day or two. You should, too. The whole thing looks screwy to me.” He looked at her. “Come have a nightcap with me.”
“Where?”
“The Cellar. Where else?”
“I’m afraid I’ll run into Beebo.”
He shrugged. “I’ve gotten to know her better.” He gazed away from her thoughtfully.
“You have?”
“She calls me all the time. ‘Where does Laura work, what does Laura like, tell me all about her.’”
“She asked you that?” Laura was slightly incredulous, but once again, she liked it. She was sorry she liked it, but she did.
“Yeah. I’m beginning to think I like her.”
“You liked her before.”
“I know.” He laughed. “I’m not making sense. I guess I mean I feel sympathetic toward her. We’re both unlucky in love. At the moment.” He looked hard at her then and said, “Please come with me, Laura. I don’t want to go home.”
“Why not?”
Again he laughed, not so pleasantly this time. “I’m afraid of what I’ll find.”
“Like what?”
“Like somebody else in my bed with Terry.”
After a moment of shocked silence, Laura put her arm in his. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere and flatter the hell out of each other.”
He chuckled at her. “Mother, damn it, sometimes I suspect you of having a sense of humor.”
They went down to The Cellar, in spite of Laura’s misgivings. Jack seemed so unhappy that she wanted to indulge him. It was crowded as always on Friday nights, but Beebo wasn’t in sight.
“She’ll be in,” Jack observed. “She’s late on Fridays.”
They stood at the bar until a couple of stools were vacated and then sat down.
“What does she do?” Laura asked rather shyly.
“Who? Beebo?”
“She must get money somewhere. She has to pay the rent like everybody else.”
“She runs an elevator. In the Grubb Building. They think she’s a boy.”
“My God—an elevator.” It seemed wrong, even ludicrous. Beebo had too much between her ears to fritter her youth away running an elevator. “What does she do that for?”
“She doesn’t have to wear a skirt.”
Laura was stunned. It was pathetic, even shameful. For the first time she saw Beebo not as an overwhelming, handsome, self-assured individual, but as a very human being with a little more pride and fear and weakness than she ever permitted to show.
Laura didn’t know how long they had been there when Beebo walked in. She only knew she had had plenty to drink and it was time to go home. Beebo walked up to her, and Laura saw her face first in the mirror. She turned around with a start and stared at her. Beebo was wearing a dress.
A dress. And high heeled shoes. She was over six feet in the high heels. Strangely enough she wasn’t awkward in them, either. She wasn’t comfortable, but she could walk a straight line and keep her balance.
“Hello, Bo-peep,” she said quietly in Laura’s ear.
Laura felt a grateful response flow down to her toes from the ear. “Hello,” she said to the mirror image and then turned to face her. “Hello, Betty Jean.” She looked at her skirt.
Beebo gave her a wry smile. “You remembered?” she said. “Do you remember the good things, too?”
“Yes,” said Laura, smiling back. And surprised herself. For a moment she felt curiously receptive. She had no idea why.
Beebo gazed at her and then she put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Hello, fellow sufferer,” she said.
“Hi, doll.” He turned around. “We’re drowning our sorrows.” He gestured at Laura with his glass.
“So I see. Mind if I drown a few with you?”
“We’d be delighted.”
Beebo nodded at the bartender, who nodded back and fixed her a whisky and water. Beebo was on good terms with the bartenders in all the gay bars. They knew what she drank and they served her without being told. Beebo leaned on the counter between Jack and Laura.
“Where’ve you been, doll?” Jack asked, waving a hand at her dress. “Masquerade ball?”
“Party,” she said laconically, hoisting her newly arrived glass.
“Gay?”
“Straight.”
“How dull. What’s the matter with you, Beebo? You’re no fun anymore. You wear skirts and go to straight parties. Jesus.”
Beebo grinned at him. “I have one dress, lover. I get it out once a year and wear it. In honor of my father. He likes dames.”
“Yeah, but he’s not around to appreciate it.”
“Well, you are, Jackson. Give me a kiss.” And she took his chin in her hand and extracted one from his reluctant mouth.
“God!” he said, and made a face. Beebo laughed. And Laura sat and watched them and wondered what they were all doing there and why they laughed at themselves when they were all aching inside from unspeakable hurts. She felt vaguely jealous to think of Beebo at a party with people she didn’t know and had never seen. Beebo surrounded by women. Laura looked at her until Beebo returned the stare without talking, only looking at Laura until Laura had to lower her eyes. “What’s eating you, Bo-peep?” Beebo said, running a finger around the edge of her glass.
“Are pants really that important?” Laura said. She said it sarcastically because she was afraid of her tears.
Beebo laughed a little. “I don’t know. How important is that important?”
“Why don’t you get a decent job?”
“Oh,” said Beebo as she understood. She finished a second drink. “I’ve got one, baby. I’m a lift jockey. Very elevating work.”
“Not funny,” Laura said. “You work all day at a lousy job like that, and then you drink all night.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes. Not very much, of course. You’re not worth it. But it seems awful. All for a pair of pants.”
Beebo laughed. “Reform me, baby.”
“I don’t have time.”
“What do you have time for?”
“Work.”
“And Marcie?”
“And Marcie.” Laura didn’t know why she said it. She knew how badly it would hurt. But she was high, the go-to-hell feeling was still with her from the morning. It was either hurt or be hurt; sarcasm or tears. She looked up slowly at Beebo. At her blue eyes and her lips turned down, with an unaccustomed trace of lipstick on them. Laura wanted to hurt her. She couldn’t stop herself. She turned on her stool to face her. “You’re ridicul
ous,” she said. “You’re a little girl trying to be a little boy. And you run an elevator for the privilege. Grow up, Beebo. You’ll never be a little boy. Or a big boy. You just haven’t got what it takes. Not all the elevators in the world can make a boy of you. You can wear pants till you’re blue in the face and it won’t change what’s underneath.”
Beebo just stared at her, her face suddenly pale and frowning, in silence. Then she turned, leaving her cigarette still lighted in a tray on the bar, and left them without saying a word to either.
Laura and Jack sat in silence for a while after she had gone,watching her cigarette burn itself out. Finally Jack said, “If Terry had done that to me, Laura, I’d have strangled him.”
Laura put her head down on the bar and cried.
The weekend was a stalemate for Laura and Marcie. Laura was so deeply involved in her conflicts that it was impossible to talk about them. In two weeks Jean would be back. In a day her father would be gone. Burr would start hounding Marcie, and Laura still didn’t know why Marcie had let him think they were lovers. And Beebo…Beebo…that hurt the worst, somehow. It was so needless, so brutal. The kind of thing Merrill Landon had done to her when he was in a temper. Just to blow off steam, to dissipate the mood. Only he went even farther. He would shout and call her names, slap her, call down the wrath of his dead wife and son on her head.
Marcie couldn’t get through to Laura, hard as she tried. She, too, began to get moody. She launched into long self-reproaching speeches which tortured Laura until she begged her to stop.
On Monday Laura went to the bank before she went to the office and withdrew one hundred and ninety-two dollars. She was going to leave herself twenty, just in case, but she left herself five instead. She had a little at home. She could get along until the end of the week. The rent wasn’t due and there was food in the house.
Jack came by at five and picked it up. “Come out for dinner with me,” he said. “I seem to have come into a little money.”
“No, thanks.”
“My treat,” he said, directing his sarcasm at himself and waggling her dollars at her.
Laura smiled faintly. “Take it,” she said. “I can’t talk to anybody tonight.”
